Sample Work
The Farmer and the Snake
(after Aesop)
As the teacher told the tale, the snake--
antediluvian symbol of deception and evil--
was found outside in winter, frozen stiff,
by the farmer—symbol of goodness and humanity.
The farmer, a kind but naïve soul,
pulled the hapless snake to his chest--
home of the beating heart, putative wellspring
of man’s benevolence--
and then, so the story went, carried the snake’s
tubular body—dying and different and, by implication,
ostensibly undeserving—back to the farm and family,
the man’s rustic castle with its expectedly loyal subjects.
The characters and settings thus forcibly arranged,
the story proceeds according to plan--
the cared-for snake warming then waking by the fireplace,
thanklessly attacking the selfless family.
Then the farmer, always the fearless savior and protector,
rushes in brandishing his trustworthy ax--
phallic symbol of the man’s strength and power--
hacking the snake into scaly villainous bits.
The story warns us that some creatures can’t be trusted,
certain groups of them unworthy of our generosity.
But what the story lacks is balance, a proper means
of weighing the elements of significance,
like an absent, but necessary, fulcrum that supports
the respect for the individual, that appreciates
the nature of that particular snake and farmer,
the uniqueness of that farm and welcoming family.
What’s missing is reality: not every farmer
is so kind, not every snake so ungrateful,
and some families and homes are themselves
unbearably cold.
Perhaps opening your heart and home are inherently
dangerous offers, necessarily involving risk.
But no challenge is ever properly hurled
at such a well-tailored answer.
And that, my friend, is why it’s called a fable.
(First published in Facets)
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How to Talk Your Way through Abandonment
Say affection, affliction, addiction.
Then say unrequited, say it clearly.
Say several random acts of unkindness were perpetrated.
Say evidently, just a naiveté wrapped in the thinnest skin.
Say an ensuing grief weighty enough to bring a body down.
Say countless quarts of rum raisin to dull the sting.
(Sprinkle liberally with the appropriate modifiers,
like brutally or dour-colored.)
Say she was not without her imperfections
and yet…
Say at his most compromised, he would
treat me with derision, without regard
for my fragile nature.
(Don’t say wretchedness is the fated fuel of the crestfallen.)
Say hands clasped, desperately,
in prayer,
in hopes of...
Then say render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.
Say endurable, say survivable.
Say I still believe despite…
(Don’t say regret shall ever taint the days of the hopeful.)
Say soft rains and the smell of the ground.
Say a formal feeling comes.
(Don’t say regret.)
Say a species of grace hovering there,
and always available for the taking.
Say everything in its proper place then.
Say the party will surely have ended
if we don’t shake a tailfeather already.
Say endurable.
Say survivable.
Repeat as necessary.
(First published in Pebble Lake Review)
Note: This poem contains lines from Sara Teasdale’s poem “There Will Come Soft Rains,”
Emily Dickinson’s poem “After Great Pain,” and the Bible, Luke 20:25.
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Let There Be a Purple Heaven
Let there be a throne of crushed velvet and a tiara
of amethysts and lavender jade waiting for you.
Let there be lilac and forget-me-nots bowing before you
in that perfumed breeze.
Let there be wild plum trees always in bloom.
Let there be an inexhaustible supply of purple nail polish.
Let there be more blueberry cheesecake than
you know what to do with.
Let there be champagne rain.
Let there be shallow pools shimmering with violet-hued fish.
Let there be songbirds with voices like Smokey and Aretha.
Let there be fireflies with bellies like glowing grapes.
Let there be mystery and suspense novels galore,
starlight bright enough to read them by.
Let there be a mild indigo moon.
Let there be stillness and as much solace as you require.
Let autumn winds never blow.
Let there be nothing shaped like debt crawling around.
Let misgivings be unwelcome there.
(First published in Ward 6 Review)
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Medusa Ghazal
You see what I mean? This is exactly how a rumor spreads,
like a dollop of rancid cream cheese over spoiled lox.
One careless morning without the curling iron and
suddenly my hair’s a mess of snakes, not just dreadful locks.
And what hope does an average girl have when the gossip’s
already turned her into a cold-blooded pariah, a bitch deluxe?
A spurned lover here, a few premenstrual days there and I’m
gorgonizing men in their tracks like some monster from the lochs.
Now do you see why I live alone in this gray-green house?
On my finger, still no ring. On my doors, still no locks.
(First published in 42opus)
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Memento Mori
October is intent on having its way with us:
haughty glabrous moon glaring down,
bitter wind bossing us around like twigs,
your cancer still spreading like an oil spill
in the once-pristine waters of your body.
At the window, a gypsy moth is negotiating
between two compelling choices--
the path of blue moonlight versus the frail
glow from the lamp next to your bed.
Of course, the moth knows nothing of nature’s
cruel jokes, nothing of technology’s artifice
and its flimsy veneer of resolution, salvation.
Back inside the room, everyone hovers in
quandary, each pair of confused eyes soaring
to and fro, hoping to land on something painless
to talk about, something perhaps lost in a corner
or encoded in the scuff marks on the floor.
None of us has been given any directions.
No one knows exactly which way to turn next.
(First published in First City Review)
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Wanderlust
Riding the subway, I notice
a seeing-eye dog guiding
its master onto the train,
directly to an available seat--
the poor faithful beast
attending, unerringly,
to its given dictate: abide by.
The humbled animal looked
back at me with a wearied gaze
as I stared and, for a moment,
I thought I understood why you left.
Surely any creature—fleet-footed
and able to—would rather run free,
would rather put its clear sight
and keen smell to some
more self-interested task--
terrifying random squirrels
scurrying for high tree branches
or maybe just spinning aimlessly
in any open field, giddy.
But a leash, even if
slipped over a consenting neck,
even if locked in place
with the best intentions,
is still a leash--
a cold efficient device
employed to make one body
follow the plan of another
rather than heeding the chaotic
cajoling of its own true nature.
(First published in James River Poetry Review)
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“Monkey Know What Tree to Climb”
On the island of St. Croix, the local
folks have this saying, aged wisdom
to explain how users match up so well
and often with their gullible victims.
When you first approached,
I stood perfectly still, barely breathing,
my long brown arms outstretched
like hopeful branches, just waiting.
(First published in The Paumanok Review)
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Basilisk
(for Dr. Camara Jones)
They can't touch you if you're fast, you know.
If you move in a manner unexpected of your kind,
it throws them and you're free.
You can escape the anxious clutching
needing to pull you down--for success
is relative at its core, you know.
Then nothing can matter without your eye on it,
everything waveless as you glide by.
Become a blur and all hurled stones
sink behind you forgettably.
Refuse to stand still and any surface
can support you for a while.
(First published in IMMERSION)
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Diminutions
a huge universe
a big planet
a vast continent
a grand nation
a populated city
a busy street
a captivated crowd
a blank sky
a tired sparrow
a tall building
a deserted rooftop
a narrow ledge
a lone man
a trembling hand
a short note
a burning eye
a falling tear
a drop
(First published in Poetry Forum)
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The Art of Tragedy
(for Leni Riefenstahl)
I. Triumph of the Will
"Hitler’s whore?"
"Nazi cheerleader?"
Ach!
I am an artist!
They saw hatred, demons, evil. I saw patterns,
unrelenting repeating symbols and figures:
torches burning holes through the wall of night,
red armbands boasting transmogrified crosses,
the hardened young soldiers goose-stepping
in stiff formation, women and children blithely
lining the roadside like white lace bordering
a dark curtain, so many right arms raised together,
so many forty-five degree angles,
a tyranny of unity, and all of them cheering
“Heil! Heil!”
as the Führer passed by.
Like snowflakes to a microscopist, fractals
to a mathematician, I saw something
for my art to speak of,
a something worth the showing.
But if they could have known my horror
as I fled Paris after seeing his handiwork...
But perhaps this is our curse:
taking sides by not taking sides,
making statements even when silent,
the condoning implied in the showing.
It may be inescapable then, but fate
has made me an artist.
* * * * * * * *
II. Olympia
A lit torch throws shadows everywhere--
shadows in time, shadows of bodies
arching upward, perfection contorted
against the coliseum wall, on the hot sand,
shadows of victory and defeat,
joy and tragedy.
I will set the camera here as the discus thrower
winds up and around, as he becomes the cyclone
his will demands he must,
then I will send it diving into the pool,
chasing alongside the sprinters
as if begging for forgiveness.
Then if I focus on the sweated brows,
the clenched teeth, the strained grimaces,
on the underside of Jesse Owens’ crotch
as he soars to victory, his thighs
like triumphant pillars, only the sun above him,
then maybe they’ll see what I see:
not just sweat, sun, sand,
but visions and shadows,
shadows of joy and tragedy,
shadows of bodies contorted,
shadows
in time.
* * * * * * * *
III. Tiefland
What is bad does not belong to us.
-Adolf Hitler
I saw wan unsuspecting clouds penned
by stern mountains, heard the terrorized bleating,
imagined the wolf strangled finally
and began to film. I had no Guernica to render,
no Uncle Tom’s Cabin to build, just Tiefland
and needed extras.
And I knew they were imprisoned gypsies but
their faces were perfect--so full of angst
and anguish--and I wanted to show how living low
could hurt you, how it could kill the soul’s golden glow,
so I didn’t ask any more than how long
I could use them.
But tell me, if you look only at the scene
through these restricting lenses, focus
solely on what is immediately before you,
how can you be held responsible for the rest,
forced to account for what transpires
outside of your devising?
* * * * * * * *
IV. Black Cargo
Deep in the bosom of Central Africa,
these people, unspoiled by the sins of machines
and money, the sins of war and greed,
with bodies like living chocolate
and cinnamon, so sweet
to the eye, so respectful of the sun,
these people, the Mesakin Nuba,
accepted me and I was happy,
and my camera and I rested there.
Little more than a month here and already
I hear whispers I am making a slavery epic
as atonement.
Let me add to the gossip then
and not complete it.
* * * * * * * *
V. Diving
What?
Well, yes, I did lie
to get my scuba lessons, but how absurd,
just because of my age, to deny me
the opportunity to go on living,
to continue exploring.
Yes,
whether in Africa or under the Pacific,
I can still hear their captious clamor.
And although it is dulled now and
my ears can tolerate the pressure,
it bothers me still.
I have always been plagued by red devils.
No!
I am artist, not politician.
I am chauvinist for the image only.
Some brand it a “fascist aesthetic”
without even viewing my work.
I have always avoided black cats.
Ach,
if I could grow gills I would never resurface,
never return to that accusing air--
Susan and so many others
jabbing at me relentlessly
with their sharp weapons.
I have always followed the blue light.
No,
I have no trouble sleeping, no blood on my lens.
Still, it seems I’m expected to apologize, as though
it were not entirely human to notice these fine points.
Say what you will but it is fate that has made me
an artist.
(Section 1 ["Triumph of the Will"] was first published in Jewish Affairs)
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Links to Some Work Online
Absinthe Literary Review (2 poems)
The Fictional Café (4 poems)
The Green Silk Journal
Umbrella (3 poems)
Valparaiso Poetry Review
Wilderness House Literary Review (4 poems)
Word Riot (2 poems)